1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to furniture and, more particularly, to knockdown upholstered furniture which can be easily assembled and disassembled.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
There exists a great demand for knockdown furniture which can be easily assembled once it has been transported or shipped from a store or other location to an area in which the furniture is to be used and can be easily disassembled for further transportation or storage. The demand for such furniture is great because, ideally, such furniture can be packaged in containers of sufficiently small size to permit transportation in conventional automobiles of the sedan type and can be assembled and disassembled by persons with no particular mechanical skills or experience with the construction of furniture.
In the past, attempts to manufacture easily assembled and disassembled furniture, which is commonly referred to a "knockdown" furniture, have unfortunately had the disadvantages of requiring the manipulation of specially designed connectors, necessitating the use of conventional tools such as screwdrivers and wrenches and, many times, specially designed tools, and of requiring more than minimal mechanical skills. Another disadvantage of prior art knockdown furniture is that the connectors have a tendency to loosen during use and/or movement of the furniture thereby mandating constant surveillance and periodic adjustments to prevent collapse of the furniture. The problem of providing a connector for use with knockdown furniture which can be simply assembled and disassembled while producing a sturdy structure capable of withstanding everyday use has been one to which much attention has been directed, but this problem has not been solved by the prior art. To this end, prior art knockdown furniture connectors have not been of sufficient sturdiness to permit the construction of upholstered furniture designed to support human beings, such as sofas, chairs, love seats and the like, in that such furniture is subject to much movement, vibration and weight transfer during normal usage causing prior art connectors to disengage. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,563,599 to Heumann, 3,774,966 to Faulkner et al and 3,857,120 to Acker are exemplary of prior art attempts to provide furniture of the knockdown type or having removable or detachable parts.
The use of lug-type connectors for fastening furniture components together is exemplified by U.S. Pat. Nos. 254,449 to Ayers, 603,162 to Baker, 881,673 to Ellison, 1,674,220 to Percival and 2,656,550 to Loeb; however, such lug-type connectors have not been used for upholstered furniture of the type which is necessarily heavy and sturdy to hold up under the weight of people sitting thereon and under the forces and vibrations created when such upholstered furniture is moved by pushing or pulling.